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WordPress for Web Developers An Introduction for Web
Professionals 2nd Edition Stephanie Leary Digital Instant
Download
Author(s): Stephanie Leary
ISBN(s): 9781430258667, 1430258667
Edition: 2nd
File Details: PDF, 19.26 MB
Year: 2013
Language: english
For your convenience Apress has placed some of the front
matter material after the index. Please use the Bookmarks
and Contents at a Glance links to access them.
Contents at a Glance
About the Author�� xix

About the Technical Reviewer�� xxi
Acknowledgments�� xxiii
Introduction�� xxv
■■Chapter 1: Getting Started��1

■■Chapter 2: Installing and Upgrading WordPress��13
■■Chapter 3: Dashboard and Settings��31
■■Chapter 4: Working with Content��49
■■Chapter 5: Working with Themes��81
■■Chapter 6: Working with Plugins��95
■■Chapter 7: Working with Users��101
■■Chapter 8: Setting Up Multisite Networks��113
■■Chapter 9: Performance and Security��125
■■Chapter 10: Importing Content and Migrating Sites��141
■■Chapter 11: Beginning Theme and Plugin Development��155
■■Chapter 12: Creating a Theme��179
■■Chapter 13: Creating Plugins��247
■■Chapter 14: Custom Post Types, Taxonomies, and Fields��291
■■Appendix A: Recommended Plugins��325
■■Appendix B: Community Resources��331
Index��333
iii
Introduction
WordPress became my CMS of choice because it’s so easy for end users to learn how to manage their own sites. In this
book, you’ll learn how to install, configure, and customize WordPress to make it the perfect CMS for your next project.
I’ll walk you through the complete development of a WordPress site, whether you’re importing content from another
CMS or writing your own. You’ll learn how to create custom themes that give you complete control over your site’s
appearance. You’ll see how to extend WordPress with custom post types when you find that posts and pages aren’t
enough, and you’ll learn to write your own plugins when your needs outstrip the built-in features.
Who This Book Is For

This book is for the professional web developer who already understands HTML, CSS, and maybe a little PHP, but has
never used WordPress before. If you’re comfortable building sites without a content management system, or with a
CMS other than WordPress, this book will teach you how to begin building comparable sites using WordPress.
How This Book Is Structured

I’ve arranged this book into three parts.
Chapters 1 through 7 provide an introduction to WordPress and a detailed tour of its administration screens.
Along the way, you’ll also learn about various plugins that might be helpful in specific situations. No particular
expertise is needed in these chapters; they are intended to be useful to all site owners and administrators.
Chapters 8 through 10 cover more advanced administration functions involving server configurations and
database operations.
Chapters 11 through 14 provide an introduction to WordPress theme and plugin development. Here, some
knowledge of HTML, CSS, and PHP is required. You’ll also see a few MySQL queries, but you won’t need to write any
of your own to follow the examples. Each chapter’s introduction includes a list of the specific technical topics that
will be relevant, along with a list of books and online resources you can use to brush up on the subjects, if needed.
Chapters 11 through 14 end with a list of articles for further reading on each subject.
Conventions
Throughout the book, I’ve kept a consistent style for presenting HTML markup and PHP code. Where a piece of markup,
a function, or a WordPress hook is presented in the text, it is presented in fixed-width Courier font, such as this:
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
xxv
■ Introduction
Downloading the Code

The code for the examples shown in this book is available on the Apress web site, www.apress.com. A link can be found
on the book’s information page under the Source Code/Downloads tab. This tab is located underneath the Related
Titles section of the page.
Contacting the Author

Should you have any questions or comments—or even spot a mistake you think I should know about—you can
contact me at stephanieleary.com.
xxvi
Chapter 1
Getting Started
WordPress has grown enormously in the last few years, going from the most popular blogging software to the most
popular web-based software, period. At 2012’s Signal Conference, it was estimated that WordPress powered 16% of the
entire web (http://sleary.me/wp1).1 A study by the Royal Pingdom blog showed that of the top 100 sites on the web,
nearly half of them ran on WordPress (http://sleary.me/wp2).2
What is this thing, and how did it get so popular?
Why WordPress?
WordPress is one of many content management systems that allow you to update your site through a simple Web
interface instead of editing and uploading HTML files to a server. Most other systems emphasize either blog posts or
web pages. WordPress is best known as a blogging system, but in fact it treats posts and pages equally. It is therefore
ideal for dense reference sites that also have a news section, or news-oriented sites that have a few informational
pages. It is a flexible system that can be used to create sites for businesses, project collaborations, university
departments, artist portfolios, and (of course!) personal or group blogs.
A developer familiar with WordPress’s application programming interfaces (APIs)—which you will be, too, once
you’ve finished this book!—can even use WordPress as an application development platform. Yuri Victor, describing
how the Washington Post uses WordPress (http://sleary.me/wp3),3 writes:
The Washington Post uses WordPress for blogging and to quickly build products and prototypes
because while being a lightweight system, WordPress is a good foundation for what we need . . . The
crazy thing [is] we’ve only been using WordPress for about six months. I don’t think The Post has
ever launched so many products, so quickly with such success.
wordpress.com vs. wordpress.org

WordPress comes in two distinct flavors, usually referred to as .com and .org.
On wordpress.com, anyone can sign up for a free, hosted site running on WordPress. The service comes with
a few limitations, however: you’ll have to choose from one of the approved themes (although there are a lot of
them), and you can’t install any plugins. On the other hand, you never have to worry about backing up your data or
upgrading the software; all of that is handled for you.
1
http://socialmediatoday.com/socialmktgfella/475399/102-people-power-16-web
2
http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/04/11/wordpress-completely-dominates-top-100-blogs/
3
http://yurivictor.com/2013/01/09/why-the-washington-post-uses-wordpress/
1
Chapter 1 ■ Getting Started
If you need more flexibility than wordpress.com offers, you can go to wordpress.org, download the software
for free, and install it on your own server, along with any themes and plugins you desire. You will be responsible for
backing up your data, installing upgrades when they become available, and making sure your site is secure (all of
which you will learn how to do in later chapters).
Most commercial Web hosts support WordPress, although only three are recommended on wordpress.org.
There are a handful of managed WordPress hosting services that try to combine the benefits of wordpress.com
(handling backups, upgrades, and security for you) while giving you the flexibility of wordpress.org (custom themes
and plugins). If the prospect of backing up and restoring a MySQL database makes you tremble, these hosts might
be the answer for you. The Vandelay Design blog has a good comparison of the managed WordPress hosting services
(http://sleary.me/wp4).4
This book covers only the self-hosted version of WordPress available from wordpress.org.
Everything You Need

WordPress is famous for its five-minute installation. In fact, if you have your database connection details in hand
before you begin, it might not even take you that long! WordPress’s system requirements (discussed in more detail in
Chapter 2) are modest, allowing it to run on most commercial shared hosting plans that include PHP and MySQL.
WordPress comes with everything you need to set up a basic web site, including:
• Posts and pages. In the most traditional use of WordPress, a blog (composed of posts) will
feature a few “static” (but still database-driven) pages, such as “About.” However, as you’ll see
throughout this book, you can use these two primary content types in a number of other ways.
• Media library. The post and page editing screens allow you to upload files and insert them into
your content: images, audio, video, Office documents, PDFs, and more.
• Categories and tags. WordPress includes both hierarchical and free-form taxonomies for posts.
• User roles and profiles. WordPress users have five possible roles (Subscriber, Contributor,
Author, Editor, and Administrator), with escalating capabilities and a basic workflow for
editorial approval. User profiles include a biography, e-mail address, URL, and a Gravatar
(a user image stored in a central service).
• RSS and Atom feeds. There are RSS and Atom feeds available for just about everything in
WordPress. The main feeds include recent posts and comments, but there are also feeds for
individual categories, tags, authors, and comment threads.
• Clean URLs. WordPress supports search engine-friendly URLs (or permalinks) on both
Apache and IIS servers, with a system of tags that allow you to customize the link structure.
• Spam protection. The WordPress download package includes the Akismet plugin, which
provides free industrial-strength filtering of spam comments for personal sites. (Nonpersonal
sites can use it for a small monthly fee.) Because it uses a central web service, it constantly
learns and improves.
• Automatic upgrades. WordPress displays an alert when a new version is available for the core
system or for any themes or plugins you have installed. You can update any of these with the
click of a button (although it’s always a good idea to back up your database and files first).
• Multiple sites from one installation. You can expand your WordPress installation into a network
of connected sites. The setup process is just a little more involved than the basic installation,
and your host has to meet a few additional requirements, which I’ll go over in Chapter 2.
4
http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/wordpress/hosting
2
Easy to Use
WordPress has an amazingly user-friendly administration interface. Even Web novices can begin updating content
with very little training.
• Rich text editing: WordPress includes the popular TinyMCE editor, which provides you with
an interface similar to Microsoft Office products. For those who prefer to work with markup
directly, WordPress has a basic HTML view as an alternative. The editor includes tools to
import content and remove embedded styles from Office documents.
• Media uploads and embeds: The content editing screens include a media uploader. You’ll be
prompted to provide titles, captions, or other metadata based on the file type, and you can
easily link to the media files or insert them directly into the document. WordPress includes
a basic image editor that allows you to rotate or resize the image. It also generates thumbnails
automatically that can be used in place of the full-size image. Images can be aligned left, right,
or center, and can include captions as well as alternative (alt) text. It’s easy to embed audio
and video files from other sites into your content—just paste the URL as you edit, and when
your post or page is published, the address will be replaced with the appropriate media player.
• Menu management: You can let WordPress build navigation menus automatically based on
your pages’ hierarchy, or you can define custom menus that link to the content you specify,
including posts, pages, categories, tags, and links to external URLs.
Easy to Extend
WordPress offers a robust template system as well as an extensive API. Anyone with experience in PHP can change
a site’s appearance or even modify WordPress’s behavior. At www.wordpress.org, you can download thousands of
themes and plugins to do just this.
• Themes determine your site’s appearance and how content is displayed. WordPress is
designed to let you switch themes without changing the underlying content. Theme files are
simply HTML documents containing some WordPress-specific PHP functions that display
information from the WordPress database. A theme can be as simple as a single index.php
file with a stylesheet, or it might contain separate, specific templates for posts, pages, archives,
search results, and so on. It might also include images, JavaScript files, and Web fonts.
• Plugins can add functions, template tags, or widgets; modify existing functions; and filter
content. A plugin could add administration screens that give you access to new settings, or it
might change WordPress’s usual behavior—alphabetizing your posts instead of sorting them
by date, for example.
• Widgets are drag-and-drop components that can be added to your site’s sidebars. For example,
there are widgets to display polls, Flickr photos, and Twitter streams. You can use widgets to
list pages, posts, and links; provide a search box; add arbitrary HTML; or display an RSS feed.
Some themes come with their own widgets; other widgets can be installed as separate plugins.
Advanced users can extend the basic types of content in WordPress by adding custom fields to the standard
title, content, and excerpt fields. You can even define your own content types in addition to posts and pages. And if
the built-in category and tag system isn’t enough for your site, you can create custom taxonomies for posts, pages, or
media files. I’ll go over custom fields, taxonomies, and content types in Chapter 14.
To see just how far you can go using themes and plugins, visit buddypress.org. BuddyPress is a set of themes
and plugins for WordPress that turns a basic site into a complete social network with member profiles, friends, private
messages, forums, and activity streams. The transformation is amazing!
3
The Business Benefits of WordPress

Because WordPress has built-in support for clean and canonical URLs, microformats and rich snippets, categories and
tags, and standards-based themes, it does a stellar job of optimizing sites for search engines. At the 2009 WordCamp
in San Francisco, Google’s Matt Cutts explained to the audience that WordPress is the best blogging platform for
search engine optimization purposes, and that choosing WordPress would be a good first step for any small business
seeking to build an online presence.
It’s easy to integrate moneymaking features into WordPress sites. Thanks to the vibrant plugin developer
community, there’s probably a plugin to help you integrate any third-party marketing services, ad servers, or affiliate
codes you would want to use. There are even a number of e-commerce plugins that will let you turn your WordPress
site into a storefront.
Sites Built with WordPress

These are just a few examples of WordPress sites. As you’ll see, there are virtually no limits to the designs you can
create with WordPress. For more examples, visit the Showcase at wordpress.org/showcase.
Web Experts and Open Source Projects

Many of the Web’s most famous designers have adopted WordPress: Jeffrey Zeldman, Eric Meyer, Jason Santa Maria,
Douglas Bowman, Dan Cederholm, and Aarron Walter are a few. Famous geeks Robert Scoble, Chris Pirillo, and Leo
Laporte use WordPress, too.
WordPress powers the web sites of other open source projects, too. For example, it’s the basis for the jQuery site
(Figure 1-1), including the documentation.
Figure 1-1. The jQuery project uses WordPress categories to organize its documentation
4
Government Web Sites

Budget-crunched government offices are turning to open source content management systems—and the results are
not as dull as you might expect. The Milwaukee Police News site (Figure 1-2) is one of the most stylish WordPress sites
on the Web today. Scroll down the entire home page to see their fantastic use of photos.
Figure 1-2. The Milwaukee Police News blog uses an innovative parallax scrolling design to mix news, statistics,
and photos into a compelling presentation
Personal Sites
Tons of public figures use WordPress for their sites. Some of their sites look more or less like blogs (Figure 1-3); others
are video libraries or design showcases.
5
Figure 1-3. Author Jennifer Crusie’s site is a standard blog with a quirky navigation menu
Blog Networks
The New York Times, Edublogs, and wordpress.com are large sites with anywhere from a few dozen to hundreds of
thousands of individual blogs. These sites use the WordPress Multisite feature, hosting all their blogs from a single
WordPress installation.
Some of these blogs include the most viewed sites on the Web. FiveThirtyEight, part of the New York Times
network (Figure 1-4), was the star of the 2012 election.
6
Chapter 1 ■ GettinG Started
Figure 1-4. The New York Times blog network includes some of the busiest blogs on the Web
Social Networks
Using the BuddyPress suite of plugins, a WordPress site can be turned into a complete social network in just a few
minutes. Niche networks built on BuddyPress include FilmmakerIQ (Figure 1-5), Vivanista, Nourish Network, and
Hello Eco Living.
7
Figure 1-5. The FilmmakerIQ network lets its members form special-interest groups
Colleges and Universities

Bates College (Figure 1-6), the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Texas Tech University, and Queens College at the
University of Melbourne all use WordPress to maintain their schools’ web sites. A number of schools use WordPress
for individual departments, such as the Yale School of Drama, Vanderbilt University Alumni Relations, the University
of Virginia Department of Environmental Sciences, Cornell Department of Music, Duke University, and Texas A&M
University—just to name a few.
8
Figure 1-6. The Bates College home page uses a stunning full-screen photo slideshow—and little else
Universities using WordPress Multisite to create a unified presence for their main sites and departments include
the University of Maine, Southern Arkansas University, Wesleyan University, Wheaton College, and Missouri State
University. Many universities also use Multisite to provide blog networks for students and/or faculty.
WordPress is also a popular choice among secondary and higher-education teachers for providing students with
blogs for their classroom writing projects.
Small Businesses
Wandering Goat Coffee and IconDock (Figure 1-7) are among the many small businesses using WordPress to run their
main business sites.
9
Figure 1-7. The IconDock site is a store featuring a clever drag-and-drop shopping cart
WordPress Tour
When you install WordPress for the first time (see Chapter 2), you’ll have a simple site dressed in the lovely new
Twenty Twelve theme (Figure 1-8). (If this theme is not your cup of tea, don’t worry. In Chapter 2, I’ll show you how to
install other themes, and in Chapter 12, I’ll show you how to create your own.)
10
Site title
Site tagline
Menu
Page title
Page content
Sidebar
Widgets
Figure 1-8. A simple WordPress home page using the Twenty Twelve default theme
Let’s break down this page and see how WordPress put it together.
At the top of the page, you’ll see the site title you chose when you installed WordPress (see Chapter 2). Off to the
right is the tagline (“Just another WordPress site”), which you can specify in the theme customizer or on the General
Settings page (see Chapter 3).
The row of links just under the site tagline is a navigation menu. You can specify which links appear in your
menu, and you can create additional menus to use elsewhere on your site. This example uses the default menu: a list
of all the pages in the site.
Below the header and the menu, you have two columns: the content area and the sidebar. This content area
shows a page. In later chapters, I’ll discuss a number of ways you can change what appears here.
This site’s sidebar contains four widgets: Search, Recent Posts, Recent Comments, and a list of archives. You can
add and remove widgets by dragging them into the sidebars on the Widgets administration screen in the Appearance
section. These four widgets are part of WordPress’s built-in set. Some of the themes and plugins you install will
provide you with additional widgets, and in Chapter 13, I’ll show you how to create your own.
Anatomy of a Page
Take another look at the content area, and compare it to the page editing screen (Figure 1-9).
11
Page content
Page title
Figure 1-9. The page editing screen
Here you can see how each page is built behind the scenes. You enter your page’s title and content, and the theme
determines how that information is displayed. You can change the display by switching themes, or by modifying the
theme you have.
Template tags are PHP functions, so if you’re familiar with PHP syntax, you’ll have no trouble learning to modify
WordPress themes. Even if you’ve never used PHP before, you can begin modifying your site by copying template tags
from the WordPress Codex (codex.wordpress.org) or a tutorial. As you grow more comfortable with the language,
you’ll find yourself making bigger changes with confidence.
Summary
In this chapter, I’ve introduced you to WordPress. I’ve shown you how WordPress is easy to install, easy for you and
your content authors to use, and easy to customize. I’ve discussed the accolades WordPress has won, and I’ve shown
you just a few examples of the wide variety of sites that can be built with WordPress. I’ve gone over the components
of a basic WordPress site and explained some of the terminology (like themes, sidebars, and widgets) you’ll see often
throughout this book.
In Chapter 2, I’ll show you the famous five-minute installation process. You’ll learn the extra configuration steps
needed to expand your WordPress installation into a network of sites. I’ll show you how to upgrade your site when
new versions of WordPress are released, and how to install and upgrade themes and plugins. I’ll also go over some
common installation problems and troubleshooting tips.
12
Chapter 2
Installing and Upgrading WordPress
WordPress is famous for its five-minute installation. Many commercial web hosts offer one-click installation from
their account control panels. If your host does not, you can upload the WordPress files to your web directory and
complete the installation using the web interface.
System Requirements
WordPress’s requirements are modest. At minimum, your server should support:
• PHP version 5.2.4 or greater

• MySQL version 5.0 or greater
• For clean URLs, a URL rewriting module that understands .htaccess directives,
such as mod_rewrite on Apache or URL Rewrite on IIS 7
Your host should list these features and version numbers in the description of hosting plans or the support area
(or both).
Your host might also offer one-click installers for many web software packages, including WordPress. If you are
taking advantage of this option, skip to the Initial Settings section.
Otherwise, it’s time to create a database and upload some files.
Installation Using the Web Interface

To install WordPress, you’ll need to create a database, upload the files, and run the installer. I’ll walk you through the
most common ways to accomplish these tasks.
First, you’ll need to set up a database for WordPress to use. If your host has already created one for you, simply
locate the database name, username, password, and host you were provided (usually in the welcome e-mail you
received when you signed up).
Otherwise, create a new database according to your host’s instructions. Figure 2-1 shows how to do this in
phpMyAdmin (the MySQL web interface most commonly used by commercial hosting companies). If you are asked
to specify a character set, choose UTF-8, which will support any language. If you are asked to specify a collation,
choose utf8-general-ci. These are the language and character settings WordPress expects, but some old MySQL
installations use more restrictive character sets as their default.
13
Chapter 2 ■ Installing and Upgrading WordPress
Figure 2-1. Creating a database in phpMyAdmin
If you have the option to create a new database user, you should do so. Be sure to grant the new user all
permissions on your database, as shown in Figure 2-2. In phpMyAdmin, you’ll go to the Users tab and edit the
appropriate user, or create a new one. Users are associated with particular hosts; here, my username is appended
with @localhost. If you are creating a new user, and your database is hosted on the same server as your web files,
localhost is usually the hostname you should use. Otherwise, the IP address of your WordPress installation is
a safe choice.
14
Figure 2-2. Granting user privileges on the new database in phpMyAdmin
■■Note Throughout this book, you’ll see that my example site’s address is http://wp. This is because I’m hosting
WordPress locally on my laptop using MAMP, a Mac application that sets up PHP, Apache, MySQL, and phpMyAdmin
in an easy-to-install package. Windows users can do the same using XAMPP. With your desktop server in place,
you can create simple hostnames like localhost or, in this case, wp, rather than using fully qualified domains.
See http://sleary.me/wp51 for details on installing WordPress with MAMP.
Once you have your database credentials in hand, you’re ready to install WordPress.
Download the installation package from wordpress.org, unzip the files, and upload the files to your web host
using your favorite FTP client software (I like Transmit for the Mac, as shown in Figure 2-3, but Filezilla, WinSCP,
or another program would be fine). Simply place the files where you want your WordPress site to be located; that is,
if you want the site to be located at mysite.com, upload the files to your web root folder. If you want the site to be
located at mysite.com/blog, create a folder called blog and upload the WordPress files to that folder instead.
1
http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress_Locally_on_Your_Mac_With_MAMP
15
Figure 2-3. Uploading files via FTP in Transmit
Once you have uploaded the files, visit the site in a web browser. You will be prompted to create a configuration
file (Figure 2-4). Fill in the requested information (Figure 2-5) as shown in Figure 2-6 and press Submit to complete
the installation.
Figure 2-4. Configuration file prompt
16
Chapter 2 ■ InstallIng and UpgradIng Wordpress
Figure 2-5. Information you need before installing
Figure 2-6. Filling in the database connection information
17
■■Caution The configuration screen suggests wp_ for the table prefix. As a security precaution, you should always
change this prefix to something else. See Chapter 9 for more information on database security.
■■Note While localhost is the most common setting for the database host, your web host might use something
d ifferent—even if the host was not included in the database settings you were given. GoDaddy and Dreamhost,
for example, do not use localhost. Check your web host’s documentation.
If you entered all the correct information and WordPress is able to connect to your database, you’ll be prompted
to complete the installation (Figure 2-7). If not, you’ll need to double-check the database connection details with
your host.
Figure 2-7. Successful database connection and installation prompt
Initial Settings
Once the installation is complete, you’ll have the opportunity to create your account, as shown in Figure 2-8.
In previous versions, the first user was always called admin, but you should choose a different username. Because
that username is so common, it’s an easy target for hackers who use automated tools to guess account passwords.
In April 2013, an enormous distributed attack was launched against WordPress (and other MySQL-based content
management systems), in which repeated login attempts were made with the username admin and a thousand or so
common passwords. Choose a username other than admin, and see Chapter 9 for more information on securing your
WordPress installation.
18
Figure 2-8. Creating the admin account
Now, visit your site’s Dashboard. Its URL is the URL of the directory in which you installed WordPress, plus
/wp-admin. That is, if you installed WordPress in the root directory of example.com, you would go to
example.com/wp-admin/ to log in.
Log in using the password you just created (Figure 2-9). You should see the Welcome screen shown in Figure 2-10.
We’ll go over the Dashboard and the rest of the WordPress settings in the next chapter.
19
Figure 2-9. The WordPress login screen
Figure 2-10. The WordPress Welcome message on the Dashboard
20
Troubleshooting the Blank White Page

On most web hosts, PHP errors are logged rather than printed to the screen. This is good security; it prevents you from
accidentally exposing your database password or other sensitive information if you mess up your code. However, this
feature also prevents you from seeing what’s gone wrong if there was a problem during your installation. Instead of
a login screen, you’ll just see a blank white page.
If you know where your PHP error log is, you can check its last line to see what the problem was. If you don’t
know where the log is, you can check your web host’s documentation to find out, or you can simply turn on the error
display until you resolve the problem. WordPress will not display your database connection information even if there
is an error.
To display errors, find the wp-config.php file in your WordPress directory. Look for the WP_DEBUG constant, below
your database settings. Change it from false to true (Listing 2-1).
Listing 2-1. Debugging with wp-config.php (Partial)

// ** MySQL settings - You can get this info from your web host ** //
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'my_wp_db');
/** MySQL database username */

define('DB_USER', 'my_wp_db_user');
define('WP_DEBUG', true);
Visit your site again, and you should see the problem. Ignore any warnings and notices, and look for fatal errors.
Is there an unknown function? Look for a missing file, or simply re-upload the entire WordPress package.
Listing 2-2 shows the kind of error message you would see if one of the files from wp-includes were missing–in
this case, capabilities.php. The first message, a warning, could be safely ignored, but in this case it provides us with
a clue as to why the second error occurred. The fatal error is the showstopper. Resolve that problem, and WordPress
should work correctly.
When you’ve solved the problem, switch the value of WP_DEBUG back to false.
Listing 2-2. Fatal Error Due to a Missing File

Warning: require(/Users/steph/Sites/wp/wp-includes/capabilities.php): failed to open stream:
No such file or directory in /Users/steph/Sites/wp/wp-settings.php on line 108
Fatal error: require(): Failed opening required '/Users/steph/Sites/wp/wp-

includes/capabilities.php' in /Users/steph/Sites/wp/wp-settings.php on line 108
You can also log errors instead of displaying them on the screen. This is especially useful when you begin
developing your own themes and plugins. To log errors, add the WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY and WP_DEBUG_LOG constants to
your configuration file as shown in Listing 2-3.
Listing 2-3. Turning on Error Logging in wp-config.php (Partial)

// ** MySQL settings - You can get this info from your web host ** //
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'my_wp_db');
/** MySQL database username */

define('DB_USER', 'my_wp_db_user');
21
define('WP_DEBUG', true);
define('WP_DEBUG_LOG', true);
define('WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false);
See the Codex (the WordPress documentation wiki) page on wp-config.php, http://sleary.me/wp6,2 for more
debug log options and PHP configuration settings that might help with debugging.
Installing Themes
Once you have WordPress installed, you’ll want to make it look good! You can change themes at any time.
You can download theme files from www.wordpress.org/themes and upload them to your
wp-content/themes folder if you wish, or you can use the automatic theme installer.
From your Dashboard, visit Appearance ➤ Themes. On this screen, you’ll see two tabs, Manage Themes and
Install Themes. Under Manage Themes, you’ll see all the currently installed themes. Click Install Themes, and you’ll
see a search screen. Here, you can search for themes by name, or you can check off a list of the features you want
(color, number of columns, etc.) as shown in Figure 2-11. You’ll get a list of results with links allowing you to preview
and install the themes (Figure 2-12).
Figure 2-11. Choosing themes
2
http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php#Debug
22
Figure 2-12. Installing and previewing themes
Once the themes have been installed, they’ll appear in your list of themes under Appearance. Click the theme’s
thumbnail image to see a preview of the theme on your site. Here, the Theme Customizer (Figure 2-13) appears. You
can see how the theme will look on your site, and you can adjust your title, tagline, and the settings that relate to your
site’s appearance. You’ll see more settings in Chapter 3.
23
Figure 2-13. The Theme Customizer
If you’re happy with the theme, click the blue Save & Activate button at the top of the screen. Otherwise, you can
cancel and try another theme.
■■Caution If you decide not to use a theme you have installed, you should delete it. Even themes that are not active
can allow hackers to gain access to your site if the theme contains a vulnerability.
Installing Plugins
While WordPress includes most of the features you would want in a basic site, sooner or later you’ll probably find that
you want something more. Visit www.wordpress.org/plugins to see all the things you can add to your site. You’ll see
more about working with plugins in Chapter 6.
You can download the plugin files and upload them to your wp-content/plugins folder, just as you did with
themes. However, there is also an automatic plugin installer. From your Dashboard, visit Plugins ➤ Add New. On this
screen (Figure 2-14), you can search for plugins by keyword or author name.
24
Figure 2-14. Searching for the Simple Page Ordering plugin
Once a plugin has been installed, it will appear in your plugin list. You’ll see a brief description of what the plugin
does, a link to its home page, and a link to activate it.
■■Caution Every plugin you add to your WordPress site represents a potential security problem. See Chapter 6 to learn
how to use the ratings and other plugin details to evaluate plugins before you install them.
Try activating Hello Dolly, the sample plugin that comes with WordPress, using the Activate link under the
plugin’s name. When the plugin list reloads, you’ll get a message confirming the activation. You should also see a lyric
from “Hello, Dolly” in the upper right corner of your screen, as shown in Figure 2-15.
25
Figure 2-15. Plugin list after activating Hello Dolly
Some plugins will not activate. They might contain coding errors, or they might conflict with something else
you’ve installed, or they might not run properly with your version of PHP. When a plugin will not activate, you’ll see
a message containing the PHP error that caused the problem, as shown in Figure 2-16.
Figure 2-16. Fatal error during plugin activation
Even the problem is simple (in this case, a typo) and you can fix it yourself based on the information shown in
the error message, you should still visit the plugin’s support forum on wordpress.org and let the author know what
happened.
■■Note All the plugins mentioned in this book are listed in Appendix A. Plugins hosted in the official plugin repository at
wordpress.org/plugins are referenced by name only, and you can find them by searching the repository for the plugin
name. URLs are provided for any plugins that are not part of the repository.
26
Chapter 2 ■ InstallIng and UpgradIng Wordpress
Upgrading WordPress, Themes, and Plugins

New versions of WordPress are released often. In addition to providing you with new features, the updated version
often includes corrections for newly discovered security problems. Keeping your installation up to date is the most
important thing you can do to prevent your site from being hacked.
When a new version of WordPress is available, you’ll see a message on every administration screen. You’ll also
see a number next to your site’s name in the admin bar. Newer versions of your themes and plugins are also included
in this number, as shown in Figure 2-17.
Figure 2-17. WordPress and plugin updates available
Bulk Upgrades
If you have several plugins that need to be upgraded, you can process them all at once. Put a checkmark next to the
plugins’ names, then choose Upgrade from the Bulk Actions dropdown at the top of the plugin list (Figure 2-17). Or,
on the Updates screen (Figure 2-18), check off the plugins you want to update and press the Update Plugins button at
the top of the list.
27
Figure 2-18. Upgrading WordPress plugins
WordPress will place your site into maintenance mode automatically, then upgrade each plugin in turn. You’ll
see a running status report as each plugin is upgraded, and when they’re all finished, WordPress will take your site out
of maintenance mode.
If you don’t plan to log in to your WordPress site very often, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed or the
e-mail announcement list for new releases. You can find both at wordpress.org/development/. The WordPress blog
includes general news as well as release announcements. If you want alerts about new versions only, subscribe to the
Releases category instead, at http://sleary.me/wp7.3
WordPress can upgrade itself automatically, or you can download the files and upload them to your web server.
See the Manual Upgrades section later in this chapter.
Troubleshooting Automatic Upgrades: FTP Credentials

In order for the automatic upgrades to work, all the files in your WordPress installation must be owned by the same
user the web server runs under. If you’re prompted to enter connection information when you try to upgrade,
WordPress doesn’t have permission to write the new files to the server. There are two ways to fix it: you can enter the
information and let WordPress upgrade through an FTP or SSH connection, or you can change the file owner.
3
http://wordpress.org/development/category/releases/feed/
28
Changing the owner is the fastest way to solve the immediate problem. However, it might not be the best
choice if you’re on a shared server. It might be a hassle: you’ll have to create a group that includes you and the
system user so you can still write to the directory, and you’ll have to make sure to change the owner again on any
new files you upload.
However, if you simply fill in the requested information on the upgrade screen, it won’t be saved, and you’ll have
to enter it again every time you upgrade the WordPress core, a theme, or a plugin.
A far better option is to save your connection information in your wp-config.php file, as shown in Listing 2-4.
With your connection settings saved, WordPress won’t have to prompt you every time you upgrade. You’ll need to fill
in the full path to your WordPress installation as well as your wp-content and plugins directories.
Listing 2-4. FTP Connection Settings in wp-config.php

define('FTP_BASE', '/home/user/wordpress/');
define('FTP_CONTENT_DIR', '/home/username/wordpress/wp-content/');
define('FTP_PLUGIN_DIR', '/home/username/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/');
define('FTP_USER', 'username');
define('FTP_PASS', 'password');
define('FTP_HOST', 'ftp.example.com:21');
define('FTP_SSL', false);
If your files are no longer visible to the public after you upgrade using FTP, ask your host if default permissions
are set on newly uploaded files when using FTP. On many servers, a umask setting is in place. This is a way of adjusting
permissions on newly uploaded files. If this is the case on your server, you’ll need to ask the host to change this setting
for you, or you’ll need to upgrade WordPress through some other method.
If the SSH library for PHP is available on your server, the upgrade screen will give you an option to use SSH
instead of FTP. To use SSH, leave the password field blank. Instead, generate a pair of keys: one public, one private.
Place both files on your server, and fill in their locations to your configuration file, as shown in Listing 2-5.
See http://sleary.me/wp84 for more details on generating SSH keys for use in WordPress.
Listing 2-5. SSH Connection Settings

define('FTP_BASE', '/home/user/wordpress/');
define('FTP_CONTENT_DIR', '/home/username/wordpress/wp-content/');
define('FTP_PLUGIN_DIR', '/home/username/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/');
define('FTP_USER', 'username');
define('FTP_PUBKEY', '/home/username/.ssh/id_rsa.pub');
define('FTP_PRIKEY', '/home/username/.ssh/id_rsa');
define('FTP_HOST', 'ftp.example.com:21');
define('FTP_SSL', false);
■■Tip Pass phrase protected keys do not work properly in WordPress. You should generate your SSH keys without
a pass phrase.
4
http://wpforce.com/wordpress-tutorial-ssh-install-upgrade/
29
Troubleshooting Automatic Upgrades on IIS

On some IIS servers, automatic upgrades will fail with this error message: “Destination directory for file streaming
does not exist or is not writable.” This sounds like a permissions problem, but it’s not; WordPress is trying to use the
wrong directory to store the downloaded upgrade files. Add the line in Listing 2-6 to your wp-config.php file to solve
the problem.
Listing 2-6. Defining wp-content as the Temporary Directory

define( 'WP_TEMP_DIR', ABSPATH . 'wp-content/' );
Manual Upgrades
If you can’t get automatic upgrades to work, or if you’re uncomfortable letting WordPress doctor its own innards, you
can always upgrade your files manually. Simply download the new version, unzip it, and transfer the files to your host,
just as you did when you first installed WordPress.
To make sure I don’t accidentally overwrite my themes, plugins, and uploaded media files, I always delete the
wp-content directory from the downloaded package before I upload the files to my web server.
Even though it’s faster to use my FTP client’s synchronize feature to upload only the files that have changed,
I usually delete all the standard WordPress files from the server–everything except wp-config.php and the wp-content
directory–before uploading the new copies. Otherwise, strange errors can occur due to duplicated functions, as files are
sometimes eliminated and functions deprecated between versions. If a function has been deprecated (and therefore
moved to wp-includes/deprecated.php) but you still have the original function in an old copy of its original file,
you’ll get fatal errors when you visit the site because the function has been declared twice within WordPress.
■■Tip Make sure the /wp-includes and /wp-admin/includes directories are completely uploaded. When things don’t
work correctly in the administration screens (menus don’t appear, widgets can’t be moved, Quick Edit doesn’t work) after
an upgrade, the problems are almost always caused by missing or corrupted files in these two directories.
If you decide to upload the new files yourself, you’ll need to deactivate your plugins first, remove the
.maintenance file if it exists, and reactivate your plugins when you’re done. See the Codex page on upgrading
(http://sleary.me/wp95) for step-by-step instructions.
Summary
In this chapter, you’ve learned how to install and upgrade WordPress. I’ve talked about things that can go wrong and
how you can correct the problems. You’ve also learned how to install themes and plugins, and how to keep your
WordPress installation up to date.
You’re ready to begin building your site! In the next chapter, I’ll go over the options that will determine how your
site will work.
5
http://codex.wordpress.org/Upgrading_WordPress
30
Chapter 3
Dashboard and Settings
Once you’ve logged in and changed your password, it’s time to go exploring. In this chapter, I’ll take you on a tour of
the WordPress administration screens (often collectively referred to as the Dashboard, although only the introductory
screen actually goes by that name). You’ll learn about all the administrative settings and how they affect the display of
your site.
The Dashboard
Most of the time, the Dashboard is the first thing you see when you log in. It shows you a welcome screen (until you
dismiss it), a snapshot of statistical information about your site, and some updates about WordPress development and
plugins (see Figure 3-1).
Figure 3-1. The Dashboard
31
Chapter 3 ■ Dashboard and Settings
Each box on the Dashboard (Right Now, QuickPress, Recent Comments, etc.) is a widget. If you’ve just installed
WordPress, you’ll see the widgets displayed in two columns. Click the Screen Options tab (to the top right of your
Dashboard) as shown in Figure 3-2, and you’ll see that you can specify the number of columns. You can also turn off
widgets altogether by unchecking them here.
Figure 3-2. Dashboard screen options
You can drag widgets around to rearrange them (Figure 3-3). You can also collapse them so only the titles are
displayed using the down arrow that appears to the right of the title when you hover your mouse over the title area.
Some of the widgets, like Incoming Links and Development News, have configurable options. You’ll see a Configure
link next to the arrow if you hover over these widgets’ titles. Let’s take a look at what some of these widgets do.
Figure 3-3. Moving Dashboard widgets
32
QuickPress
The QuickPress widget lets you write a blog post right from the Dashboard. It’s handy but limited; you can use tags but
not categories, media uploads but not the rich text editor, and you can’t change the post’s publication date or status.
Still, if you need to dash off a quick missive to your readers, QuickPress can save you a step. You’ll see the full post
editing screen in Chapter 4.
Incoming Links
The Incoming Links widget is set up to show you Google Blog Search results for your site’s URL. The widget is
configurable (Figure 3-4), so if you’d rather see results from some other service, or if you want to change the number
of search results displayed, click Configure in the widget’s title bar and edit the settings.
Figure 3-4. Configuring the Incoming Links Dashboard widget
■■Tip The Incoming Links, WordPress Development Blog, and Other WordPress News widgets are all just RSS readers
with some preconfigured options. If you want to show other RSS feeds instead of these three, click Configure and replace
each widget’s URL with the feed URL you want to use.
WordPress News Blog

This widget displays headlines from the blog at http://sleary.me/wp10.1 New releases, including security updates,
will be announced here. If you decide to configure this widget to use another feed, you should subscribe to the
WordPress News blog feed (http://sleary.me/wp11)2 in your RSS reader or sign up for e-mail notifications at
http://sleary.me/wp12.3
1
http://wordpress.org/news
2
http://wordpress.org/news/feed
3
http://wordpress.org/download
33
Dashboard Widget Plugins

Some of the plugins you will install (see Chapter 2) might add more widgets to your Dashboard. These widgets behave
exactly like the built-in Dashboard widgets; you can drag them around, configure them, or turn them off altogether
using the Screen Options.
Screen Options are personal settings; that is, while you might turn off some Dashboard widgets, they’ll still be
visible to all other users. There are several plugins you can use to turn off widgets for all users who might be confused
by the developer-specific information, particularly the News Blog, the Plugins, and the Other WordPress News. See
Appendix A for a list of Dashboard-related plugins.
The Administration Menu and the Admin Bar

You’ve probably noticed the navigation menu along the left side of your screen. Did you notice that it has two formats?
By default, each menu option displays an icon and text (as shown in Figure 3-5), and you can click each option to
expand the submenu below. Once you learn your way around, though, you might find that you recognize the icons
alone and it’s faster to hover over the main menu options to reach the submenus. You can switch to the icons-only,
hover-style menu using the small arrow below the menu.
Figure 3-5. The two menu styles, wide (left) and collapsed (right)
The admin bar (Figure 3-6) is the dark gray bar that appears at the top of every page, both in the administration
screens and on your site’s pages, as long as you’re logged in. If you would prefer not to see the admin bar when
viewing your site, you can turn it off under Users ➤ Your Profile. The admin bar includes quick links to the most
common administration screens: creating new content, managing comments, and updating WordPress core files,
plugins, and themes.
34
Figure 3-6. The admin bar
I’ll go over all the sections in the administration menu by the end of this book, but for now let’s skip to the last
section, Settings.
Settings
The Settings panels give you control over almost every aspect of your site. In addition to the options below, many
plugins will add settings panels with even more options. There’s a lot to cover in the Settings panels, so let’s dig in.
General Settings
The General Settings are shown in Figure 3-7. You’ve already seen the first few options: the blog title and URLs shown
here are the ones you chose during the installation process. The tagline is a brief description of your site that might be
displayed near your blog title, depending on the theme you choose.
35
Figure 3-7. The General Settings screen (top half )
The Membership and Default Role options are useful if you want to start a group blog. If you allow visitors to sign
up as users, you can allow them to contribute posts to your blog. I’ll discuss WordPress user roles in depth in
Chapter 7, but for now, here’s a quick overview:
Subscribers can edit their own profiles and not much else.
Contributors can submit posts for editors’ approval, but can’t publish anything.
Authors can write and publish posts.
Editors can write and publish posts and pages. They can also publish posts and pages
submitted by other users.
Administrators can do everything.
These five roles apply only to registered users. General visitors to your blog have no role at all. No matter what
you choose as the default new user role, you can promote users later in the Users panel.
The rest of the settings on the General Settings page deal with date and time formats (Figure 3-8). You can set
your local time zone and choose the date format you prefer. WordPress dates are formatted with the same strings that
PHP’s date() function uses; see http://php.net/date for all your options. The Week Starts On setting changes the
way calendar grids are displayed. If you use a calendar archive widget in your sidebar (which you will see in Chapter 5),
this setting determines which day begins the week.
36
Chapter 3 ■ DashboarD anD settings
Figure 3-8. The time and date section of the General Settings page
Writing Settings
The first three options you’ll see on the Writing Settings screen (Figure 3-9) have to do with the editor you’ll see on the
Post and Page Edit screens. WordPress uses the popular TinyMCE editor (http://www.tinymce.com) for its rich text
option. The HTML view uses normal markup, but line breaks are converted automatically: one becomes a <br /> tag;
two denotes a break between paragraphs.
37
Figure 3-9. Writing Settings (top half )
The next two options determine how the editor will handle emoticons (a complete set of smilies is included in
WordPress) and any XHTML you enter.
■■Tip TinyMCE doesn’t always handle advanced markup well. If the Visual editor drives you crazy, look on your user
profile page (Users ➤ Your Profile) for a check box that allows you to turn it off altogether.
WordPress requires posts to be assigned to at least one category. Here, you can specify which categories should
be checked by default when you create new posts. You probably haven’t set up any categories yet, but you can always
return to this page after you’ve read the next chapter.
Press This is a bookmarklet for faster blogging. Try it out! It selects content from the web page you’re viewing and
pastes it into the post editor. This makes it easy to quote someone or repost an image.
38
Figure 3-10. Writing Settings (lower half )
Posting by E-mail
Posting by e-mail is possible, but somewhat limited. HTML tags will be stripped from e-mail messages. Attachments
are not converted to media uploads, but are instead included as raw data. The post will be assigned to the default
category specified in this section, if different from the usual default category, unless your e-mail subject begins with
[n], where n is the ID of another category.
In addition to filling in the e-mail account details listed on this screen, you’ll also need to set up a way for
WordPress to check that mailbox periodically: cron, the WP-Cron plugin, Procmail, or .qmail. Check
http://sleary.me/wp134 for detailed instructions.
Update Services
There are a number of ping services that aggregate information about recently updated blogs. In other words, they let
people know that you’ve posted something new. If you’ve just installed WordPress, you’ll see one service listed here,
Ping-O-Matic. It’s a central site that feeds into lots of other services.
If you want to go beyond Ping-O-Matic, take a look at the list of ping services maintained by Vladimir Prelovac at
http://sleary.me/wp14.5 If you use Feedburner, Google’s service for publicizing and tracking RSS feeds, you should
also add their PingShot service to your list.
4
http://codex.wordpress.org/Post_to_your_blog_using_email
5
http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/wordpress-ping-list
39
Reading
The Reading settings (Figure 3-11) determine how your posts appear to your visitors. This is where you can determine
whether your site works like a blog, with the most recent posts on the home page, or displays something else. (There
are more advanced ways of doing this, which I’ll cover in Chapter 12.)
Figure 3-11. The Reading Settings screen
Under Front page displays, if you select a page as your home page, you’ll have the option to display your blog
posts on another page. Anything you’ve entered into the body of that page will not be shown; instead, it will be
replaced with your most recent posts.
The next setting, Blog pages show at most, determines how many posts per page appear on the blog home page,
archive pages, and search results. You can choose a different number of posts to appear in your Atom and RSS feeds, if
you wish.
If you want to make your feed subscribers click through to your site to read your complete posts, you may
choose to show them only a summary of each post. Keep in mind, however, that the feed summaries strip the HTML
formatting from your posts, including things like lists and images. If your unformatted excerpts wouldn’t make sense,
consider leaving this setting on “Full text.”
40
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
Dinner is Served
Swiftly and noiselessly a large block of snow at the base of the cairn
itself moved to one side disclosing a laughing face, the same lovely
countenance upon which I had gazed several weeks before. The
wearer listened for a full minute with bird-like intentness, then
leaped lightly out and straightened up, a long-limbed, graceful
creature wearing the conventional summer furs of the Northern
Eskimo. Her hood was thrown back showing a glimpse of entrancing
shoulder but what dazzled me most were the starry blue eyes, fair
skin and wealth of molten, golden hair!
Her first act was to circumnavigate the cairn which she did with the
same silent rapidity that marked her every motion. She then made
directly for the lure, bending over it, touching it cautiously and finally
raising it and burying her face in its scarlet folds, while her laughs
rang out muffled but intoxicating.
This was my chance!
Bursting through my prison walls I rushed toward her while Swank,
by arrangement, crashed out of Pease, darted to the entrance, slid
the block into place and sat on it. I was upon her before she had a
chance to move.
"Akalok!" I cried (the Northern dialect for "friend"), as we rolled over
and over in the snow. My old football training stood me in good
stead for I had made a perfect diving tackle. Inwardly blessing the
name of Ted Coy, I pinned the lithe, palpitating body to the snow,
repeating more tenderly the soft appellation, "Akalok, Akalok."
But my triumph was shortlived.
For the first time her lips moved and from between them burst a
wild, frantic cry, strangely familiar to my ears.
"Makuik! Makuik!"
At the repetition I heard a shriek of pain from Swank and glanced
over my shoulder in time to see him rise in the air. The ice block was
shattered beneath him and I saw an ugly stub of seal-spear, thrust
accurately where he had formerly sat. Directly back of him leaped an
ape-like figure as swart and scowling as a Japanese war mask. He
carried a terrific weapon, a keen-edged blubber cutter, with which he
made directly at me.
At ten paces I recognized him but too late to stop the impending
blow. Firing over my shoulder, a tricky shot at best, I shattered the
bone blade into a thousand fragments, at the same instant jumping
to my feet and shouting—"Makuik! Tapok!"
I had given my name, "Tapok," the Icelandic pronunciation, and at
the sound he stopped like a man shot.
"Makuik!" I cried again.
His ferocious scowl faded through stupefaction to astonishment and
gleeful recognition.
"Tapok!" he rumbled, spreading his arms wide. "Kata pokok Ikik
nakatok!"
I regret that I cannot translate his remark which was highly
improper and referred definitely to the woman, Ikik, who stood
trembling beside us. She had raised her oomiak and now, to hide her
blushes, folded her glorious hair across her face so that she
resembled some divine being, half goddess, half skye-terrier. Back of
the screen I saw her blue eyes shining and caught a suppressed
gurgle of mirth. All, then, was not lost.
In the meantime the cairn was humming like a mighty hive while
through a re-opened aperture crawled other individuals, first a
younger Eskimo, a mere stripling, followed by four other Eskimos, all
radiant blondes. One of them carried a child, slung over her shoulder
in her oomiak.
At a command from Makuik, Swank was helped to his feet, the spear
being extracted from his person by Snak, a slender maiden with a
mischievous smile who deftly poulticed the wound with a handful of
snow.
If the reader is astounded at the sudden turn of events he can
imagine my feeling when my eyes rested on Makuik, mighty hunter
of the Kryptok tribe, whom I had last seen twenty years ago when
we had fought our way four hundred miles across broken ice from
Ki, an uncharted speck north of Iceland, to Archangel. It is a long
story. Suffice it to say that I had saved his life twelve times during
the trip while he had done nearly as well by me. We had sworn
eternal blood-brotherhood and the word of an Eskimo is as good as
his bond; better, in fact.
The Kryptok tongue came back to me fluently and I quickly
assembled the family group—for such it was—in our dugout where a
distribution of A-P and such small presents as I could lay my hands
on transformed what had been two hostile camps into one joyous
assemblage.
While the women gurgled their satisfaction over their new fly
swatters and empty herring boxes, vying with each other in their
attempts to ease Swank's pain, Makuik explained the situation.
The women were all his wives, fruits of victorious battle. They were
of the Klinka tribe, perfect blondes, as I have noted. The young man
was his oldest son by an Iceland mother.
"Too old. I eat. No good wife ... good eat," he explained frankly.
The infant was his youngest. There would be others. His party had
been caught at the Pole by an unexpectedly early summer. For
protection from the heat they had taken to the cairn, there to await
the winter freeze which would make travel comfortable and possible.
"But why did you hide?" I asked.
"Me not know," he said, smiling craftily. "You have trees."
"Trees?" I mused, then burst out laughing. Of course! He referred to
my imperial and goatee, which I have worn since my service in the
Bodansky Zouaves, and which he had never seen!
It was as clear as day.
Chuckling with delight, the old warrior showed me over their living
quarters while I marvelled at his vigor, preserved in this world of ice.
The interior of the cairn was astounding. Instead of entering a
domed chamber, similar to the many igloos I have inhabited, we
went down, down for a surprising distance. The entire habitation
was hewn from the eternal ice to depths far beyond the reach of sun
or storm. It was a three-room-and-bath arrangement, the latter
consisting of a trough, at a slightly lower level than the main floor,
filled with lucent seal oil. The rooms were respectively, living-room
(which also served as kitchen and dining-room), bedroom, simply
furnished with community sleeping-bag, etc., and storeroom, piled
high with blubber, fur-steaks, walrus eyes and other Eskimo dainties.
The temperature was slightly below freezing, a delightful change
from the prostrating heat we had been enduring, though I will
confess that I began to think longingly of mittens and bear-skins and
was glad when we once more ascended into warmer atmosphere.
I reached the surface just in time to meet the returning members of
my party who, needless to say, were faint with astonishment at the
change in conditions.
General introductions were in order and a blithe evening meal was
soon under way. But how different a feast from the man-made orgy
that had disgraced our arrival. How completely the presence of these
gentle savage women had altered the complexion of our enjoyment.
Sprawling about Ikik and Snak, and the other three, Yalok, Klikitok
and Lapatok (whose babe had been placed in its cold storage niche),
my companions engaged in all sorts of innocent foolery. Though they
spoke not a word of each other's language a subtle understanding
had sprung up between them. Was it the common strain of
Caucasian blood or simple sex calling to even simpler sex? I cannot
answer.
Frissell had produced a lavish supply of toys from his pack which
made an enormous hit. Ikik had a colored doll which she nursed
affectingly. Lapatok joyfully wound a police rattle, while Snak,
Klikitok and Yalok sucked rubber teething-rings with evident relish.
Makuik reserved for himself a monkey-on-a-stick which he regarded
as a sceptre, the mechanism of which pleased and mystified him.
At nine o'clock Whinney announced triumphantly that his radio was
working. He switched it on and we listened in awe while a far-away
voice, introduced as Miss Anita Scatchett of the New Jersey State
Normal School, told a Bedtime story, "How the Animal Crackers
Came Alive."
I say "we listened in awe." I must amend that statement. For a few
moments I was mildly impressed. It did seem odd to think of a
gentle spinster in Newark, thousands of miles away, speaking to
these children of nature. But as far as our guests were concerned,
the feature was a dud. The subject matter soon began to bore us all
and we shut it off, to Whinney's disgust.
A FAR-OFF FASHION-PLATE
In the charming scene herewith depicted, Yalok, the beautiful
Klinka belle, is posing as if she were a mannequin on parade in
some lovely al fresco fête, as indeed she is. The background in
itself is interesting, showing, at stage right, the Tarpaulin Tea-
House erected and conducted during the Summer months by
Herman Swank, Dr. Traprock's artistic fellow-voyager. To this
picturesque châlet the Eskimo maidens turned with womanly
instinct and its accommodations, limited to two, were in great
demand. Mr. Whinney, when not entertaining a personal guest,
sat outside. But these intimate details need not detain us.
The principal figure is Yalok who, for the purposes of
photography, has donned the very latest 1922 Spring-model
sports-suit. She wears, it will be noted, "a woman's crowning
glory"—her own hair. The other glories are supplied by the hair
of various animals indigenous to the Arctic.
Reading from North to South this snappy get-up consists of the
otary over-smock or slip-in with sliding sleeves of unborn-seal,
the roomy "roamers" of polar bearskin and the pliant chassures.
The sleeves, another loose seal effect, modestly cover the entire
arm or arms and flare back vehemently from the gauntlets,
which may be eider-down or up. The roamers, again, cut loose
from conventional lines and melt suavely into the retroussée
wading slippers. The last mentioned articles are fashioned from
the pelt of the Amok, which usefully grows hair on both sides of
its hide. The fore-and-aft apron or windshield is nattily edged
with ermine and at the back runs smartly into a train. A last-
minute accessory is the fly-swatter, Dr. Traprock's gift to the
lady, which is held at the correct angle of 45°.
More important, however, than mere costume is the art of
wearing it, an art in which this lovely model is evidently entirely
at home. Her position is that demanded of a debutante in the
most exclusive Eskimo society, when she is presented to a
distinguished foreigner, the head modestly bowed, the eyes
downcast, the arms in an alluring come-and-get-me position
and the feet gracefully parted in the middle.
A final touch of chic unreproduceable by photography but which
has all the allure of a truly Parisian pomboire, is the perfume
(Eau de Musk-ox) which adds its ineffable odor to this arctic
rose, a hovery halo, and exquisite ectoplasm.
A Far-off Fashion Plate
A few moments later I rose with a start. Something in the air chilled
me with horror. Glancing toward the horizon I gasped, then quickly
caught myself.
The sun was half hidden below the horizon! The light was distinctly
dim!
I thought no one had noticed my involuntary start, but Makuik,
though seemingly absorbed in his monkey, leaned toward me and
whispered, "Night come."
Night! My God! It had stolen upon us unaware. We would be caught,
trapped in the deadly grip of the North King who had claimed so
many brave men before us.
The darkened atmosphere suggested but one thought.
"Bed," I said. "Sleep."
My oblivious companions took it as a signal for dispersal. They rose
reluctantly. Good-byes were said. Noses were rubbed affectionately.
Then an embarrassing episode took place.
Makuik, who had marshalled his flock before him, suddenly seized
the lovely Ikik by the shoulder and thrust her into my arms.
"You take," he said, smiling broadly. "Me give."
Her warm body pressed against me, not unwilling. It is the Kryptok
custom, as usual as giving a man a drink.
Confused and inefficient, I stood there. But my perplexity was
shattered by another surprise. A compact, wiry form hurled itself
between us. It was Sausalito, her face livid with fury!
"You let that woman be!" she shrieked, panting, glaring.
Makuik shrugged his shoulders and pushed the Eskimo woman
roughly toward her fellow wives. Then, turning, he glanced
contemptuously at Sausalito.
"No good ... you eat." He leered, swinging off toward his sub-cellar.
"Dog-face!" screamed Sausalito. "Pig's-foot...."
Triplett's great hammer fist struck her squarely on the jaw and she
sank limp in his arms.
Late that night I lay tossing on my blankets, prey to a thousand
conflicting emotions, fear, joy, and sickening anxiety, beneath which,
like the burden of a refrain, ran the overwhelming thought: "She
loves me. Sausalito loves me. What shall I do?"
It was the first time such a proposition had ever daunted me.
FOOTNOTES:
[17] Literally.
"When the wine of his love
Is the grave of his wit."
See "The Song of Beer-wolf," trans. by Ola Ramberg.
[18] Puvis de Bloue says, in his "Voyages Blageux" (Flammarion
ed., 1918) "les yeux sont l'enemie de la verité."
[19] A variant of the always interesting skunk family,
distinguished by the constant orientation of its physical
peculiarity. It is perfectly safe to capture these little fellows from
the south. The Arctic type has been found as far south as Lake
Wayagamac.
(See "Among the Moufette." J. Pell, Col. Coll., N.Y.) The pair
captured by Plock had been nullified by the usual method. Author.
Chapter VII
Still procrastinating. Our pastimes at the Pole. An exchange of
love-tokens. Ikik's avowal. Caught in the embrace of the Aurora.
Chapter VII
The longer I live the more of a fatalist I become. Looking back on
the weeks which followed our meeting with Makuik and his family I
see myself powerless in the grip of a force superior to my own. How
else can I account for the procrastination which, day after day, week
after week, held me in my perilous location. For that it was perilous
my brain told me clearly.
Seven previous trips into the Arctic had taught me that its climate
could be treacherous as well as friendly. If I have seemed to
expatiate on the tropical warmth of an exceptional summer, the
hottest on record in the meteorological archives of Iceland (which
are the oldest in the world), rest assured that it is with no wish to
encourage ill-equipped pleasure-parties to venture forth into these
icy solitudes. I have been warned by an eminent polar authority that
it would be dangerous and wrong to instill this idea. I thoroughly
agree with him. Woe betide the week-end tripper or basket-picnicker
who fares beyond eighty-six with no protection other than a warm
sweater and a quart thermos of coffee! He is doomed before he
starts or immediately thereafter. When the short summer wanes the
thermometer plunges without warning to incredible depths and
almost certain disaster results.
A NIMROD OF THE NORTH

A large volume might be written about this illustration alone.
Big game hunting, in the last analysis, is usually a feeble sort of
sport. The stalking of itself is a beneficial form of exercise but
when at last the two strong brutes, human and animal, stand
face to face it is an odds-on bet on the human. An express-
bullet takes little account of hide or hair. Compared with this
form of target-practice, fly-swatting and mosquito-slapping are
gallantry itself.
We may learn something from Makuik, the Kryptok huntsman
who is seen en face in the act of capturing part of his winter's
meat-supply in the person of a magnificent specimen of the
ursus polaris. The method universally employed by the Eskimo
is that of the surprise-onslaught. Polar bears, for some reason,
do not expect to be attacked by men from the air.
Perched on a rocky eyrie the native huntsman warily scans the
floe for his victim. The path beneath the precipice is baited with
small cubes of seal and pemmican meat along which the prey is
led by appetite just as children at birthday parties are led
through the mazes of a peanut-hunt. When the bear is directly
below him, the hunter springs silently into the air and descends
like a falling archangel on the creature's back. A hunter's
prowess is measured by the height from which he dares to
jump. Makuik holds the Kryptok record in this event is 40 Kyaks
(approximately 520 ft.). At the termination of a successful jump
the bear breaks the fall and the fall not infrequently breaks the
bear. But the risk is great and in case of a miss the Nimrod
becomes forthwith data for the actuaries and food for the bear.
As in all aerial feats the important part is the landing.
In the incident portrayed the result was the not unusual one of
a glancing blow. Striking the bear's shoulder Makuik was thrown
for a loss of seven yards, not, however, before he had pinned
one of the bear's paws to the ice with his keen-edged ratak.
From then on the fight was a fierce hand-to-paw affair, one
round to a finish with the incessant in-fighting, knife against
claw, brain against brain.
Makuik won the decision after forty-three minutes of gruelling
and growling work, not without considerable damage to his
person. Throughout the battle he consistently placed his knife-
thrusts where they could later be made into buttonholes by his
beautiful wives, beginning at the lowest button and working
upward to the lapel. The bear was thus actually tailored during
the process of destruction. Forest and Stream please copy.
A Nimrod of the North
And yet, knowing these things, I stayed. Discarding all plans,
scrapping all schedules, denying all reasons, I delayed, lingered and
waited. For what? Death, perhaps, but before death, Love! Ah, love!
love! mad will-o'-the-wisp, flaming with tragic intensity in the very
core of a berg, destroying passion, paralyzing my will-power even as
the spirit of winter laid his icy hand on my shoulder.
My companions, fatally influenced by my example, were no longer
restless but completely satisfied with their surroundings and with the
society of the Klinka women who, as the light waned and the
temperature dropped, ventured more and more into the open.
Nowhere in the world will one find such gaiety, friendliness, and
generosity as among these child-like denizens of the North. I do not
except even the glorious Filbert Islanders who were my own
discovery. During many a long twilight I sat with Whinney, Triplett
and Swank about the Primus stove which we now found
comfortable, chatting of our Polynesian friends and evoking many a
tender memory. Of all who made that famous cruise only our former
crew was missing, Thomas, the sailor-man whom we left behind. But
I could not find it in my heart to envy him.[20]
Compared with northern tribes all Polynesians are slow and
lethargic. Nothing could exceed the swift grace of these glorious
Klinkas, and many a day of rare sport we had while there was still
light. Our contribution to the program usually consisted of an
American game adapted to local conditions: tennis, using the native
snowshoes for rackets and balls of inflated fish-membrane, or golf
over a sporty nine-hole course with constantly shifting snow-bunkers
and water-hazards. This variable quality in the links made play
extremely interesting and likewise supplied a much needed alibi for
our scores. Frissell's inventiveness created extraordinary good clubs
out of parts of our cooking utensils lashed to whale-bone shafts,
with which it was no unusual thing to drive upwards of seven
hundred yards. The idea is covered by patents.
To my amusement Makuik and his entire family were deathly afraid
of the pogo-sticks. In their simple minds this contrivance was
endowed with life of its own. When I finally forced one on Ikik she
planted it fervently on a little cairn where it was worshipped as a
God. How strangely the idea of the totem-pole persists! And
speaking of poles, no outdoor sport proved more popular than
tether-ball, with the ball tethered to the Pole itself.
The Eskimos were far from lacking in amusements of their own,
though these naturally had a direct bearing on some ulterior object
such as blubber for food-supply or furs for warmth. It has remained
for the superior white races to invent games which are of no use
whatever.
Time and again Makuik thrilled us by his long distance harpooning of
seals which now sought the floes in large numbers.
The perfect poise, the powerful thrust, the long trajectory and the
final, squashing hit just behind the ear were enough to excite the
envy of an Olympic javelin thrower.[21] The feat was the more
remarkable when it is considered that a seal's ear is on the inside
and, therefore, invisible.
Some of the novices in my party were slightly overcome by the mad
rush of Makuik's family toward the stricken carcass from which they
tore and devoured long strips of blubber, but needless to say this
was an old story to me. Fresh seal's eyes are a coveted tid-bit, and I
was much touched when Ikik brought me one, warm and quivering,
in the palm of her hand. It was plainly a love offering as I saw when
I looked from her eyes to that of the seal. One should chew them,
not gulp them down, in order to get the full flavor which is not unlike
a Cape Cod oyster, though more salty and slightly oily.
The women were particularly fond of leading us on searching parties
in quest of seal roe, which we found in large quantities in the
shallow nests lined with the yellow wax which exudes from the pores
of the mother. Both roe and wax are highly prized by the natives
who spread them, mixed, on squares of seal hide, forming
sandwiches. In winter the seal fur is also included on account of the
extra warmth which is provided.[22]
It was a happy thought of mine to present Ikik with an enormous
church candle which, having been blessed, had been presented to
me by the Bishop Metaxis Polyphlosboios in Constantinople. Ikik and
I were alone when I offered it, in return for the eye she had given
me. I wish my readers could have seen her divine smile as she
touched, smelled and finally tasted the white cylinder, which was so
much more refined than the fresh fat and tallow which had been
daily pabulum.
"Tapok, Ataki! Traprock, I adore you!" she cried, throwing herself at
my feet and chewing the uppers of my moccasins, the native
expression of complete devotion.
"Enough!" I murmured, raising her by her hair; "here come the
others."
Though my "affaire de cœur" was progressing satisfactorily, I was
forced to walk warily. Some of my fellows were infernal busy-bodies
and Sausalito, poor wretch, watched over me with furious jealousy.
Innumerable were the diversions of those happy, happy days, the
mad pursuit of an occasional musk-ox, of which the women were
insanely fond because of the perfume derived from its peripatetic
gland, and the absorbingly interesting observations of the Arctic
guppys, those unique fish which bear their live and full-formed
young on the ice without the tedious formality of laying an egg. The
mother guppy immediately eats her offspring and the race between
her and the Eskimo audience to see which could get the most, was
not the least amusing phase of this quaint accouchement.
And then the long, twilight evenings, snuggled down in the deep furs
of our friends, sharing the warmth of our tiny Primus under the
Kawa's lee, crooning our songs, passing our plugs and our gay
banter. I feel sure than I shall never be nearer heaven.
On an immemorial date, for our watches had long ago run down, we
sat thus in our little Arctic circle listening languidly to a number on
Whinney's radio,—"What the Sunday Schools of Kansas are Doing," I
believe it was,—no; "The weather a hundred years ago today," that
was it,—when I suddenly realized that it was dark; not twilight, but
actually dark!
Can you realize what that meant to me? Startled, I withdrew my
thumb from Ikik's soft lips and raised myself on my elbow. About me
in the gloom were vague bundles, Swank and Yalok, Frissell and
Snak, Whinney and Lapatok, Wigmore and Klipitok, Triplett and
Sausalito, silent, rapturous, oblivious. But a strange thing was
happening.
All about the circumference of the great ice bowl, of which we were
the center, rose trembling, blue flames. I could hear their fluttering
hiss and crackle. Now they leaped higher, shooting out giant arms
toward the zenith, waving lambent fingers, shivering, interlocking,
melting. My companions, aroused, sat up and I could see their
startled faces lighted by an unearthly light.
The noise and glare increased. Swishing waves of fuchsia-pink swept
up the sky; muffled explosions were followed by writhing snakes of
lemon-yellow and far-flung globes of purple and crimson gleamed in
the sky while, directly overhead, millions of miles away, the North
Star looked down indifferently.
At times the wall of encircling flames, now approximately ten miles
high, leaped in unison, to a diabolical rhythm; again they moved
about us in procession, gigantic, towering, flapping, hissing,
whistling, rippling, a night-mare of glorious colors which have no
names. The very ice below me, cracking and groaning, was shot
with fiery veins.
AN ARCH ARCHEOLOGIST
One of the most pathetic figures in the author's startling
"exposure" is that of Bartholomew Dane, the Egyptologist who
is here shown with Snak, his Klinka assistant, pursuing his
speciality of comparative archeology.
A word as to Dane's previous record may bring some
information to the few Americans who have not made
archeology, with emphasis on Egyptology, a hobby. Born of
Nordic stock (his maternal Grandmother was one of the Iceland
Krakkens), educated in the more-than-usually-common schools
of South Bend, young Dane showed early aptitude in geography,
history and kindred studies. His passion for research work was
early in evidence his every leisure moment being spent in the
examination of abandoned cellar-holes, cisterns, wells, rubbish-
heaps and public dumps. His parents, fearful lest their son turn
out to be a rag-picker secured for him an under-janitorship at
the Natural History Museum of New York City, doubtless hoping
to thereby shift the blame for his development from South Bend
to the Metropolis. From then on his rise was rapid. Working his
way up from the cellar we next hear of him as Secretary to Prof.
Thurston Mudgett of the Extinct Civilizations Dept. His course
from there to the Nile delta was clearly indicated.
Six months later the young archeologist disappeared, only to
reappear six months later laden with honours conferred by the
Egyptian government, a full-professor in the College of
Alexandria, a recognized authority abroad belatedly received
with equal honors at home. His great work on Scarabs among
the Arabs is in itself an enduring monument.
What led Dane northward is a mystery. That he hoped to find
the missing link in the almost completed itinerary of the lost
tribes of Israel we know. That he failed in this dream is a sad
fact. But there is solace in the thought that amid the snowy
wildernesses of the Pole he found in the companionship of the
sympathetic Snak a love which could never have reached him
over the hot sands of Sahara.
Due to overwork, exposure and an unavoidable blow on the
head, his mind has failed considerably of late but in his lucid
moments he hints darkly at having made certain interesting
discoveries which have nothing whatever to do with archeology.
His earlier achievements, his protracted sojourn in the Tomb of
Put, his discovery of the Temple of Murad, all these he lightly
dismisses. "The first year was the pleasantest," he laughs; the
rest is silence, and the silence is, we trust for this courageous
spirit—rest.
An Arch Archeologist
The Eskimos had buried their heads in their oomiaks, my
companions lay face downward.
Desperately frightened, I still resolved to face the end, to see what
my dazed senses told me was the final conflagration of the world.
Staggering to my feet, I glared about me, taking in the picture with
all its ghastly details, the Pole and its flags, the cairn, the Kawa,
every block and halyard of which was etched on this field of flame.
How insignificant it all seemed.
The world had finished its trick; it was as a tiny bead, cast away by
the Creator, a cinder in the eye of God!
Suddenly the flames turned incandescently white, rushed toward me
and, on an overwhelming wave of siren wailing, I was swept away,
billions of miles beyond the Pole-star, to Eternity....
Ikik was rubbing my forehead with a cool tundra sponge and her
face above me was that of an angel.
"Did you see?" she asked. "It was beautiful."
The Eskimos were discussing the display critically.
"Too green," said Makuik. "No good. Cold come."
Peering through the darkness I saw the dim outline of the Kawa. The
Pole stood intact. Nothing was harmed, nothing singed.
The astounding truth burst upon me, astounding and important to
me though nothing to these ages-old Aryans.
We had been in the exact center of the aurora borealis.
Another milestone for American science!
FOOTNOTES:
[20] William Henry Thomas, cook, valet and foremast-hand who
refused to leave the Islands, where he now rules with the title of
Filbert the First, under an individual mandate conferred by the
Paris Conference. See "Cruise of the Kawa," Chap. 9, p. 133.
W.E.T.
[21] For an interesting account of Eskimo games see the essay by
Dr. R. Petersen. "In Lintinwinger i Kippenskabssel-skabet i
Christiania," delivered April 3, 1920. W.E.T.
[22] I tried to eat one of these fur-bearing sandwiches in 1898
and nearly died laughing. T.
Chapter VIII
The Arctic Night. The temptation of Traprock. The pros and cons
of falling. We solve an age-old riddle. Our Polar Christmas. The
love-philtre. Abandonment.
Chapter VIII
"Eighty-six below," announced Captain Triplett the next morning,
"an' a fine, starry night."
Old Ezra was right. Night had fallen while we slept. The long Arctic
blackness had followed our twilight sleep, and we were now in the
grip of its intense cold.
How strangely fate works her miracles! But for my first glimpse of
Ikik and our subsequent meeting, we should inevitably have
perished, clad as we were in our light linen-mesh and flannels. But
the Eskimos had foreseen our peril and supplied us with roomy
garments from their own abundant store. No gift in their possession
was withheld by these warm-hearted people. Gauntlets, socks, boots
and great hooded oomiaks were pressed upon us in which, as soon
as we had become accustomed to their overpowering odor, we were
extremely comfortable and were able to go about during the less
severe weather without danger of being frozen unawares, a very real
risk for the novice.[23]
Makuik was insistent that both parties join in sharing the protection
of his sub-surface home.
"My meat, yours ... my woman, yours ... you know."
His words were accompanied by the Kryptok sign of blood-
brotherhood reserved for members of the clan. Were I to divulge it
here I should some day feel the thrust of Makuik's salmon-spear
between my shoulder blades. It was a dramatic feature of Kryptok
ritual that a sin against blood brotherhood may only be washed out
by the blood of the offending brother.
But though I realized the closeness of the tie which bound me to this
furry friend, though every fibre of my being cried out to accept the
gift which he offered so gladly, a gift which meant warmth,
happiness, love!—knowing all this, I was firm in my refusal.
In the face of a temptation, the greatest perhaps of my life, I
resisted, I fought, I struggled.
My reasons were many and complicated. If they were right or not I
do not know, but they seemed so at the time.
To begin with I knew in my heart that the beginning of close clan
relations with these magnificent Klinkas meant the end of the
Traprock Expedition! That we should ever again return to civilization
was absolutely unthinkable. Here, in this winter solitude, I saw the
first glimmerings of the truth over which the scientific world has so
long puzzled. Here was the answer to the old, old, question, "Why
do explorers leave home?" Why have so many never returned?
They have been absorbed by, and eventually into, one of these
magnificent tribes. They have disappeared, or if they have found
their way back to civilization, having proved failures in their new
environment, they are tongue-tied, evasive, ashamed.
If I accepted Makuik's hospitality, in full, I saw another inevitable
result. He would eventually have to die at my hands. There is room
in a small nomadic tribe for but one leader, one "Kalok" or "Strong
man." This is the ancient law of evolution. Bound as I was to Makuik
I hesitated to take the first step which spelt his doom.
THE BATTLE ON THE BRINK

Students of the text of this volume will recall that a distinct
rivalry existed between two of the principal characters, Sausalito
and Ikik. The author makes what to us seems a delicate
distinction regarding the object of this rivalry. "It was," he says,
"not so much me as my love." There is something almost astral
in this subdivision. Be that as it may, a strong feeling of
competition existed between the two ladies which vented itself
in frequent passages between them similar to that illustrated.
In this case the struggle started, as usual, in the most friendly
manner, its object being the possession of a stub of candle, the
last of the great dip presented to Ikik by Dr. Traprock.
Developing, as such things do, from playful wrestling to rough-
house, it was not long before the Klinka maiden found that she
was struggling for her life. Sausalito's experience in catch-as-
catch-can work, gained up and down the Barbary coast, was an
equal match for the supple strength of her adversary and there
is little doubt that the result would have been fatal to one or
both participants had it not been for the timely intervention of
Makuik who, seeing how things were going and fearing possible
damage to one of his favorite wives, kicked over the icy stage
upon which the drama was being enacted, at the same instant
throwing the carcass of a bull-seal where it would intercept the
fall of the contestants. Had it not been for the skill of Makuik in
throwing the bull we can well imagine what would have
happened. The animal weighed 220 poks or "meals," that is,
approximately 2200 lbs., a "meal" being reckoned as 10 lbs. of
any form of food-supply.
After the fall described above a temporary truce was patched up
but the feeling of rivalry remained acute. As the philosophical
author observes, "Being in love with two women is one thing:
being loved by them is another."
The Battle on the Brink

A final consideration, though not one which bore much weight, was
that there were not enough Klinkas to go round. I have, perhaps,
indicated in my previous chapter, that the process of natural
selection, though far from home, had not ceased to operate. The
Klinka women, while filled with joyous camaraderie, clearly had their
favorites and the pairing which I noted most often was that of
Swank and Yalok, Frissell and Snak, and Whinney and Lapatok.
Frissell amused Snak immensely with his outlandish noises and
imitations, and Lapatok, who stayed near the cairn more than the
others in order to care for little Kopek, her boy, found in the now
helpless Whinney another child upon whom to lavish her affection.
Makuik smiled tolerantly at these innocent relations. The women
were his, when all was said, and I have no doubt that had the
faintest wave of jealousy stirred his primitive heart he would have
calmed it by the old tribal method of holding the offender under
water for the few seconds necessary to allow the ice-opening to
freeze over.
Unfortunately the other members of the expedition did not accept
the situation so calmly. Plock, Miskin and Sloff were by no means
satisfied with an arrangement which so plainly left them out of it.
Dane was not by nature a ladies' man, though he took the color of
the others' mental attitude. On numerous occasions I was forced to
intervene when a sudden minor crisis developed. Miskin took
umbrage because Snak gave Frissell the largest piece of blubber, or
some other tom-foolery, and before one could stop it the air was hot
with suppressed antipathy.
This state of affairs frankly worried me and I was not anxious to
make it worse by accentuating it in the intimacies which were bound
to develop in Makuik's igloo.
I therefore issued the strictest orders that all my men should bunk
on the Kawa, a regulation which I forced myself to adhere to in spite
of the most terrific temptations. We had completely overhauled our
running gear during the warm weather and now found that by
running the Tutbury at quarter speed, thus charging the batteries,
we were able to generate just the right amount of heat required to
keep us comfortable.
We soon adapted ourselves to our new mode of life. All outside
thermometers were hung upside down in order to read properly and
whenever the temperature was above forty below we sallied forth
into the night, on pleasure or profit bent.
An early inspection was made by Miskin, Sloff and myself of the rim
of the ice bowl, immediately following the stupendous display of the
aurora borealis, which had ushered in the winter. Makuik
accompanied us and it was from the naive comments of this child of
the north that we arrived at a solution of a large part of the
problems in connection with this phenomenon.
As we travelled about the circumference of the bowl I was at once
struck by a deep trench or moat which followed its outline. The sides
of this moat, which averaged approximately 200 yards in width, were
glazed with freshly formed ice which appeared at first to be black in
color. A closer inspection showed that this color was derived from a
sub-surface stratum of finely powdered carboniferous deposit similar
to coal or cinders. At no place were we able to reach this deposit
owing to the shortness of our ice picks, but both Miskin and Sloff
agreed that the buried material was clearly a metallic slag which had
been subjected to extreme heat.
It was at this point that Makuik injected his interesting personality
into our deliberations. Observing our puzzled looks he stooped and
gathered up a handful of loose snow crystals which he thrust into his
mouth, at once expelling them with a mighty gust of breath. Then
he clapped his stomach and said—
"Ice ... sick ... so ... pouf!" another great blast.
My mind flashed back instantly to the claims of an old scientist of
whom I had heard my friend Waxman speak, one John Cleves
Symmes. As far back as 1819 Symmes had advanced the theory that
the earth was hollow. His exact statement reads "the earth is hollow
and habitable within, being composed of a number of solid,
concentric spheres." Unfortunately Symmes was unable to travel
further north than the site of what is now Racine, Wis.,[24] so that
his theory remained only a theory and he was eventually laughed
out of court.
Now, over a century later, I was to verify a part of his suspicion.
That the earth was hollow we could not doubt. Subsequent
excavations in the great polar ditch confirmed what we had begun to
realize. The entire section of earth crust at this end of the axis was
loose! Deep in the bowels of Mother Earth still burned the terrific
primal fires, occasionally venting themselves in some such upheaval
as we had witnessed. Whinney later corroborated the findings of
Sloff and Miskin regarding excavated specimens of the slag, namely,
that they were composed of rhyolite rocks, pulverized lime and other
building materials plainly produced by volcanism. The ceaseless whirl
of the earth on its axis naturally throws these expanding substances
toward the Pole until the bung, or world stopper, is loosened. As
soon as the terrific pressure is relieved the ice cap sinks back and
the melted snow at once seals the circular fissure.
It is the discovery of such long-sought truths as this which more
than repays me for the hardships involved. As I pen these lines I can
but bow my head in humble thankfulness to Him who knew too well
to fashion this Earth without a safety valve.
The exact date of this and other discoveries is indeterminate. Since
the stopping of our chronometers we had gone mainly by
guesswork. I was fully aware, from the advent of the polar night,
that time had slipped on to approximately September 20th. Knowing
our exact position (Lat. 90°, Long. 0) it was a simple matter for
Triplett to re-establish a definite day schedule by the theodolite-
hygrometer method combined with astronomy. The weather was
now clear and excellent views of the stars were obtainable from any
given point. Altair, Vega and Betelgeuse were particularly visible, but
Triplett's favorite constellation was the Dipper, the handle of which
he usually triangulated with Cygnus and ourselves. Three successive
observations gave Saturday, September 28th as the correct answer
and I forthwith posted notices of this fact, which was celebrated by
a joint feast.
Night, it is said, is the time for reflection and I now had ample
opportunity for this exercise. Unfortunately for the philosophic calm
which might have resulted from thought, Ikik, my lovely northern
sweetheart, had other ideas as to the proper disposal of the
nocturnal hours. The glances which she levelled at me across the
Primus were, to say the least, importunate. Little by little I felt my
icy resolution thawing beneath her tropic influence.
It was an odd situation. About me the wastes of berg and floe, the
mercury skulking in the basement of the thermometer, while in my
heart burned an increasing glow that would not be extinguished. Yet
I fought on, a St. Anthony of the North.
Christmas came, as it will even in this distant clime. The event was
marked by a general celebration. As I went about the preparations
for the feast I little realized how tragically the date was to stand out
in my memory.
Morning dawned dark and clear. We used the Pole for our tree,
having fashioned branches of oars, pogo-sticks and other suitable
materials. During what would have been the fore-noon we groped
our way to the edge of the ice bowl, in groups of two or three. I was
in one of the groups of two. The other half was Ikik.
Sitting in silence on the edge of the earth crater, I mused sadly. How
wonderful, I thought, if the great safety valve would but open and
bear my love and me away in its flaming arms. But the conflagration
was to be of a more human and dangerous character.
"See," whispered the maiden. "I have brought my present for you."
How like her it was, to steal away from the others for this sacred
presentation. I peered at the object in her hand. It was a small sack
of translucent fish membrane filled with a viscous liquid.
ODE TO THE AURORA

No more poignant moment in the history of American literature
has ever been recorded by the camera than that shown with
this text which portrays Whinney, the poet-scientist, in the very
act of creating his immortal poem "Ode to Aurora," which John
Farrar, the veteran critic, pronounces "the best classic ode ever
written north of the arctic circle."
As a poet Whinney resembles Milton, in that he is blind. Though
this was only a temporary affliction,—snow-blindness,—its
immediate effects were heartrendingly pathetic. Not only did the
unfortunate traveller miss seeing the Pole and the polar
fireworks but he was also forced to master the most difficult of
all literary exercises, that of operating a typewriter with mittens
on. The ancient pastime of catching a flea while wearing
boxing-gloves is child's-play compared with this achievement.
Hour after hour, day after day, the persistent poet practised his
sightless-touch system.
"What does it look like?" he would ask, submitting a page to
Sausalito who had good-naturedly assumed the duties of
nursing-secretary.
"Nothing," would be the invariable reply.
But with dogged perseverance Whinney struggled on, gaining a
comma here, and a colon there, until he had mastered his
instrument. The result all the world knows,—those deathless
lines beginning:
"O Aurora!
Not only East, but North as well,
And West! and South!
Th' extraordinary tidings tell!
Flash thy bright beams
And wave thy lambent paws,
Clap thou thy rays
In luminous applause."
For sheer glory of color the description of the aurora which
forms the main part of the ode has never been equalled. And
then the solemn close, touching in its modesty.
"Tell thou the world,
That it remember shall
The names of Traprock!
Whinney! Swank! et al."
Since returning to this country Mr. Whinney has taken out a
regular poet's licence and is now turning out verse of the very
highest standard.
Ode to the Aurora

"What is it?" I asked tenderly.
I could feel her flush against my cheek.
"Walrus tears."
"Walrus tears?" Ah, yes, I remembered. Years ago an old woman in
Bjarkoi had told me that the tears of a male walrus if caught fresh,
were an infallible love potion.[25]
"Like Tristan and Isolde," I murmured. She shook her head,
uncomprehendingly.
"Drink!" she whispered.
Smiling at the superstition, yet unwilling, unable, in fact, to resist the
pleading look in her eyes, I loosed the thong and placed the sack to
my lips.
The next instant she was in my arms!
My brain reeled. The stars danced dizzily overhead and were then
blotted out. A moment later I became aware of a ludicrous and
embarrassing circumstance. Locked in each other's embrace we
were sliding down the icy incline of the bowl!
We struck fairly in the midst of a group composed of Triplett, Makuik
and several others who greeted our arrival with roars of laughter;
surely a strange ending to a "crise d'amour."
At four-thirty we lighted our tree and had carols, presents and
general dancing. At six the feast was served, the heaping ice slabs
being placed along the counter of the Kawa which was decked with
her full suit of colors and all her extra riding-lights. Pemmican,
blubber-steak, seal- and walrus-eyes, hide-salad and guppy-
croquettes were supplemented from our waning stores of biscuit,
herring, ham, candles and A-P. Even little Kopek was not denied a
place and sat near his mother sipping a soapstone cup of modified
whale's milk.
Swank had compounded a new drink for the occasion which he
called "Traprock tea," consisting of A-P shavings dissolved in salad oil

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Listing 2-1. Debugging with wp-config.php (Partial)

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